📚Body Trust Book Club - Week 3 (a.k.a. Life Happened, We’re Still Here)
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
Hi!
Welcome back 💛 Thanks for being here — and no, I didn’t forget about our little book club. Life and capacity simply did what they do, so I’m officially in catch-up mode. Consider this your permission slip to do the same.
Before we dive in, here’s a quick refresher on our reading schedule for anyone whose brain (like mine) could use one:
📖 Reading Schedule Reminder
Week 1 (Jan 12–18): Pages 1–36
Week 2 (Jan 19–25): Part 1 — Chapters 1 & 2
Week 3 (Jan 26–Feb 1): Part 1 — Chapter 3 & Part 2 — Chapter 4 **this week
Week 4 (Feb 2–8): Part 2 — Chapters 5, 6 & 7
Week 5 (Feb 9–15): Catch-Up / Rest Week 🌿
Week 6 (Feb 16–22): Part 3 — Chapters 8 & 9
Week 7 (Feb 23–Mar 1): Chapters 10, 11 & 12
As you can see, I am actively using my own scheduled catch-up week to catch up on Weeks 3 and 4 😅Messy human leadership at its finest. We set goals, life intervenes, and then we adjust, pivot, or gently keep going.
No shame.
No drama.
Just reality.
Okay — onward to Week 3.
✨ Week 3 Recap
As I continue reading this book, my desire for everyone to read it only intensifies. And then re-read it. And then maybe read it again until the messages fully sink into the bones.
Chapter 3: Your Coping Is Rooted in Wisdom
This chapter feels especially important to linger with.
As someone who was brought to Weight Watchers at 16 & "Curves" both programs where weekly weigh-ins and expected weight loss were completely normalized for teens— I saw myself in so many of the stories shared here. These early messages about bodies, food, and worth? They don’t just disappear. They leave marks. They shape how people relate to themselves for years (sometimes decades). Naming them, understanding them, and finding a path toward healing and freedom from diet culture, anti-fat bias, and systems of oppression is a huge part of the work I do with folks.
I deeply appreciate how many stories this chapter highlights. There is something profoundly relieving about being reminded: you are not alone. So many people carry traumatic diet culture experiences from childhood and adolescence — and none of us imagined them.
One line that I really loved around the emotion of shame:
“The biggest challenge is that we are afraid the shame pit represents who we really are. That this is the ‘true’ self and the rest of the time we are just fooling people.” (p82)
Oof. This right here. This is one of the hardest parts of working with and through shame — the fear that it reveals some core truth about us, instead of recognizing it as something learned, absorbed, and reinforced over time.
Also, can we take a moment for the way diet plans (and yes, GLP-1s) are described as “a knight on a white horse (which no one ever needed)” 👏👏👏
Another message worth putting on repeat forever:
We almost never blame the plan, the diet, or the eating disorder.Instead, we have learned to blame ourselves, internalizing failure and self doubt over and over and over again.
BUT, the truth is this:
“Our bodies have strong psychological and physiological responses to food restriction and dietary restraint.” (p84)
YES. THIS. Louder forever. This isn't & has never been about being "lazy" or our "willpower" or "lack of control" -- this is about our bodies trying to keep us alive and save us from starvation (which diet culture calls intermittent fasting or keto or GLP1s).
I also loved the concept of radical self-preservation, defined as:
“A kind of self-care that nourishes your sense of worthiness and isn’t tied to changing the size of your body.” (p90)
Let that land.
And finally, a sentence I feel like I say to clients most days:
“Be gentle with yourself. Judgment, as well as our inner critic, have a way of spinning a single narrow narrative about our lived experience. They shut down curiosity, which is necessary for change.” (p92)
Mic. Drop.
Chapter 4: Divesting from Diet Culture
This chapter?✨ Chef’s kiss. ✨
This line alone deserves framing:
“Our socialization and indoctrination is so deep that we don’t even think to question how we navigate the world of food, eating, and exercise.” What we learn at home, in school, from health care providers, and from society gets absorbed as truth. Gospel." (p100)
This is one of the biggest reasons why we need to be gentle with ourselves as we learn about diet culture and the various systems of oppression that uphold it. There is a lot to unlearn. I also found pages 107–110 on BMI are especially well written (and worth re-reading). The way the authors pull together research and history makes it painfully clear how problematic BMI is.
I also found that the authors do an excellent job of pulling key excerpts from the books “Fearing the Black Body,” “Body Respect” and this article by Audry Gordon -- all of which I recommend for further reading!
On the topic of intentional weight loss, one particularly striking quote worth highlighting:
“There isn’t a single program that has five-year outcome data to support it, and yet health care providers keep recommending weight loss when the data and their clinical experience show the most consistent effect of weight loss at two years is weight gain.”
Let that sink in. And repeat it back to any health care provider who encourages intentional weight loss for "health"
The chapter wraps up with some incredibly practical, doable ways to start divesting from diet culture today, including:
Reducing body checking
Getting rid of the scale (or checking it far less often)
Unsubscribing, blocking, or unfollowing harmful social media
Curating your feed intentionally
Learning about fat acceptance and non-diet alternatives
Tossing tools that reinforce hustle and control
Boxing up clothes that don’t fit your body right now
Making sure you do have clothes that fit today’s body
Stepping away from weight-centric conversations
Challenging gender training
Practicing body gratitude
Stretching body positivity until all bodies are included and affirmed
None of this has to be done perfectly. Or all at once. Or forever. Small shifts still matter.
Is there anything you think you can start doing more of from the list above right now?
💛 Wrapping Up
If you’re reading along and feeling activated, tender, angry, relieved, or exhausted — it all makes sense.
If you’re behind on the reading, welcome to the club.
If you skimmed, paused, or had to put the book down for a bit? That counts too.
This work is personal
It’s layered.
And sometimes it asks us to sit with things we weren’t taught how to hold.
More soon — including a Week 4 recap, coming from someone who is learning (again and again) that doing things imperfectly is still doing them.
Talk soon 💫